This invention relates to a retainer assembly for retaining medical instruments. It relates especially to a retainer assembly capable of holding irregularly shaped medical instruments at fixed positions in a tray or other container.
There exists in the prior art various retainers and accessories for fixing the positions of articles of one kind or another. These include hooks, pegs, clips, brackets, etc. Such retainers may be used in a wide variety of different applications. For example, they are commonly used in the medical field to fix the positions of various surgical instruments, devices and prostheses while those articles are being transported and processed in one way or another. Accordingly, we will describe the invention in that context. It should be understood, however, that the present invention has application in other fields besides the medical field.
Medical instruments are often transported in trays. Prior to use, such instruments are placed in a tray and subjected to sterilization. To improve the circulation of steam throughout the tray, the tray bottom wall and perhaps the tray side walls are usually formed with a multiplicity of vent holes. In order to maintain a separation between the various instruments in the tray, the instruments are supported or retained by posts, brackets or other retainers anchored to the tray. Following sterilization, the tray full of instruments may be transported to an operating room and placed close to a surgical team whose members may withdraw the instruments from the tray as needed for the particular surgical procedure being performed. Usually, the instruments are selectively arranged or organized in the tray so that they can be picked from the tray in the order in which they are needed for the particular procedure. Examples of such trays are disclosed in my U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,424,048 and 5,681,539.
The known retainers or accessories for positioning instruments in a tray include a simple post or a blade-like bracket which is releasably secured to the bottom wall of the tray at a selected location thereon. The bracket usually has slots, openings, fingers, etc., which are adapted to receive or engage medical instruments so that the bracket can support and/or fixate the instruments within the tray. Often the post or bracket is adjustably anchored to the bottom wall by utilizing selected vent holes in that wall. In other words, the retainer is formed with fastening means which may be inserted into a selected vent hole or holes in the bottom wall of the tray and secured to the bottom wall around the hole(s).
The fastening means on the post or bracket may be one or more passages for receiving threaded fastener(s) inserted through the selected vent hole(s) from the underside of the tray. Alternatively, the fastening means may be a reduced diameter neck or necks extending down from the underside of the post or bracket and which is/are dimensioned and arranged so that each neck can be received in a vent hole in the bottom wall of the tray and releasably anchored to the bottom wall, e.g. by a C-clip clipped around the neck segment that projects below the bottom wall. In some constructions, each neck is terminated by a barb which may snap into the associated vent hole in the tray bottom wall to anchor the retainer(s).
In any event, by properly positioning two or more retainers in the tray, those fixtures can engage and fixate the opposite ends of different length medical instruments.
While such conventional retainers and accessories are satisfactory for many applications, they do have certain drawbacks. More particularly, when making up a tray of medical instruments for a particular operation, the usual procedure is to lay down the various instruments at selected locations in the tray. Then, the posts, brackets, and other accessories are positioned around the instruments so as to “corral” or support them at those locations. Then, the accessories are anchored to the tray bottom wall at the closest vent hole(s) therein. Thus, when threaded fasteners are used to anchor the retainers to the tray bottom wall, the tray has to be upended or overturned in order to turn down the fasteners with a screwdriver or the like. This is an annoyance and an inconvenience to healthcare personnel who are usually pressed for time. Those retainers with barbs which snap into the vent holes in the bottom of the tray usually acquire a loose fit over time. This is because the barbs that plug into the vent holes become worn away by the sharp edges of those holes. Resultantly, the retainers can become separated from the tray during routine handling of the tray thereby upsetting the organization of the medical instruments in that tray.
Another problem with the retainers which snap into place as aforesaid is that they are dimensioned to fit in a tray having a specific wall thickness. The same holds true for accessories retained by C-clips which snap into grooves in the retainer necks as described above. In reality, the wall thickness of medical trays can differ depending upon the tray material. For example, an aluminum tray may have a wall thickness of 2 mm., a stainless steel tray may have a thickness of 1 mm., and a plastic tray may have a wall thickness of 3 mm. It is impractical to stock three different sets of retainers of the last-mentioned type that will reliably and securely anchor to trays made of such different materials.
Therefore, there is a need to provide medical instrument retainers or accessories that can be anchored reliably to most if not all of the vented medical instrument trays and containers in use today with minimum inconvenience.